Pages

Monday, March 19, 2012

Weekend Wanderings: St. Patrick's Day

Even though it started out on Friday with me on the couch crying over commercials, this was actually a really lovely weekend. The weather has been unseasonably gorgeous in New York, and we spent as much of it outside as two people who work full time and go to school full time and were hosting friends all weekend could. Which is to say, not enough, but it was lovely anyway.

We spent the morning of St. Patrick's Day cleaning and getting things ready to make corned beef and cabbage before Cece and Justin came over bearing delicious soda bread. We popped everything in the slow cooker and headed to the park to play Kubb with Rob, Dan, and Neils. Have you ever played this game? It's pretty fabulous. Rob introduced it to us about two years ago, and a few months later, my father serendipitously found a pattern for a set in his woodworking magazine and made it, so it's infiltrated all parts of my outdoor life. This is a happy fact. Unfortunately, it turned out to be much colder the second time we went outside (and I was only wearing a green sundress and cardigan), so after a few rounds, we headed back uptown for dinner, which was fine, but didn't hold a candle to the corned beef and cabbage my grandmother used to make. Any tips for next time?

Sunday, we met up with Vrinda and Karen, our program assistant from studying abroad, for her birthday. I feel really blessed to have kept in contact with so many people from that year. We all had brunch at Freeman's, which has a really cozy atmosphere and nice meals. A few hours of reading in Morningside Park later, Allison made her way to Harlem to spend the night before flying home to Ohio, and we had a nice dinner of sushi and mixed drinks at Asiakan. Afterward, we all "worked" and generally distracted each other until it was time for bed. It was a weekend of seeing people I never see, and while I'm exhausted now, it was wonderful while it was happening.